Treason Lobby Does Damage Control On Birthright Citizenship

The Treason Lobby is getting very
nervous about
the issue of birthright citizenship—the current
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that gives
U.S. citizenship to everyone born in the U.S., including
the children of illegal aliens.

Arizona State Senator
Russell Pearce, who introduced the anti-illegal
alien
SB 1070, indicated he would like to introduce a bill
to deny birthright citizenship on the state level.
Legislation is already pending in Texas and Oklahoma
plans on following suit as well. A number of U.S. Senate
Candidates, including
Rand Paul, are making birthright citizenship an
issue during the campaign. A June 3 Rasmussen
poll found that 58% of US voters opposed giving
birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens
while only 33% supported it.

In the past, the usual suspects
just dismissed birthright citizenship as a fringe issue.
But now they are getting worried there appears to be a
concerted attempt to push back.

“True, an undocumented adult can be sponsored for a resident visa by a
citizen child—but not till the kid reaches age 21. To
imagine that Mexicans are risking their lives crossing
the border in 2010 to gain legal status in 2031 assumes
they put an excessive weight on the distant future.”

WW refutation: Given U.S.
failure to enforce immigration law, it is not
unreasonable for an illegal alien to assume that they
can live here illegally for 21 years and then receive
sponsorship from their US Citizen children.

Indeed, I could accuse Chapman of
racism for assuming that Mexicans have short time
horizons—Seattle Public Schools list having long time
horizons as a form of“cultural racism”.

You need only look at the Treason
lobby`s own rhetoric about how enforcing our immigration
laws is
tearing families apart to see how birthright
citizenship is used as a way to prevent enforcement
against the illegal alien parents. President Obama was
at it again in his
recent immigration speech—he specifically said we
cannot deport illegal aliens because

"it
would tear at the very fabric of this nation—because
immigrants who are here illegally are now intricately
woven into that fabric. Many have
children who are American citizens."

With enough creativity and a few dollars, an immigration
lawyer can try to make even one anchor baby reason
enough. To get an idea of how this works, the Forensic
Psychology Group`s website gives examples of different
types of “expert testimony”
they can provide at immigration hearings.

“In
extreme and exceptional hardship cases, if one parent
has to leave the United States, it can produce a
separation anxiety disorder on the part of the child
left behind. Some children, especially those who are
very young and lack the emotional maturity to understand
why a parent might have to leave the United States,
might also develop a depressive disorder.”
[Immigration
Law,
Forensic Psychology Group.]

And if that child is also a US
citizen, it becomes a pretty substantial anchor to
prevent deportation.

Moreover, the same supporters of
birthright citizenship are trying to make it even more
difficult to deport illegal alien parents of anchor
babies. Solomon Ortiz`s (D-TX) Comprehensive Immigration
Reform ASAP Act of 2009, which has over 100 co-sponsors,
moves from
“extreme hardship” exceptions to
prohibiting the detention of illegal aliens who have
children(any children, not just American citizen
children)except in“exceptional
circumstances.” [H.R.
4321. Title I, Sec. 162]

Myth 2:Birthright
citizenship does not encourage illegal immigration

Chapman argues:

“One study cited inPeter
Brimelow`s 1996 anti-immigration
screed, Alien
Nation, found that 15 percent of new Hispanic mothers whose
babies were born in Southern California hospitals said
they came over the border to give birth, with 25 percent
of that group saying they did so to gain citizenship for
the child. But this evidence actually contradicts the
claim. It means that 96 percent of these women were not
lured by the desire to have an `anchor baby.`”

WW refutation:
Once again, I could accuse Chapman of being“racist” for
falsely assuming that every single Hispanic woman in
Southern California is an illegal alien. Of illegal
aliens, the number is necessarily much greater than 4%.

Schumacher-Matos writes:

“Pregnant Mexican
women from border towns do commonly cross just to have a
baby in the United States. But their extended families
have often straddled the border for a century or more.
The women tend to be middle class, pre-pay the hospitals
in cash and go home, though their children can someday
return.”

I do not see how Mexican citizens choosing to have
their child born in the US, just so it will have to
option to immigrate here in the future, is any less of
reason to oppose birthright citizenship.

Schumacher-Matos [Email
him] acknowledges that a“A handful of
tourists do the same,
but the total of all these is minuscule.” As usual,
there are no good statistics on just how many people
come to the country to give birth, but we do know it`s
far from
“miniscule”. There is an entire“birth
tourism“ industry complete with hotels
specifically for pregnant women to have US citizen
children.

Schumacher-Matos continues:

“Significant are the 4 million
children in 2008 with one or more unauthorized immigrant
parents spread throughout the country,
according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Repeated
studies, however, show that their parents came for jobs
or to join family. The children were normal byproducts
of life, and not an immigration strategy.”

But no one is arguing that birthright
citizenship is the
only reason why illegal aliens come here, or even
why they stay. Nevertheless, when we have somewhere
between 12 and 20 million illegal aliens living in our
country, a few percentage points has a lot of
consequences.

Myth 3: Birthright
citizenship has repeatedly been upheld by the courts,
and was the intention of the drafters of the 14th
Amendment.

WW refutation:In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment is Reconstruction
legislation and therefore less than 150 years old.

Plyler was a
terrible decision. But it did not rule on the issue
of birthright citizenship—merely on public education for
illegal aliens. It did, as Chapman and Schumacher-Matos
note, state that the illegal aliens fit under the
Jurisdiction Clause of the 14th Amendment.
But it is up to
future Supreme Court justices to decide exactly how
far they wish to take it.

“Go back… and
read the transcripts of the 1866 debate in the Senate
and you find that both those for and against the
amendment readily acknowledged its application to
illegal immigrants. A Pennsylvania senator [Edgar
Cowan], for
example, objected to granting citizenship to the
children of aliens who regularly commit `trespass`
within the United States. The concern then was with
babies of
gypsy or Chinese parents.

“But Congress and
the ratifying states opted instead to uphold a founding
principle of the republic that was fundamental to the
peaceful building of a multiethnic immigrant nation,
however imperfectly. In a world plagued by bloody ethnic
conflicts, that concern remains valid.”

Here, Schumacher-Matos falsely implies
that the Amendment passed over these objections. But in
fact Cowan`s objections were
satisfied by Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois who was
chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time. He
explained that the Citizenship Clause

“will not, of course, includepersons born in
the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who
belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign
ministers accredited to the Government of the United
States, but will include every other class of persons.”

(WW
emphasis).

Trumbull
continued:

“The provision
is, that `all persons born in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.` That
means `subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.` …
What do we mean by `subject to the jurisdiction of the
United States?` Not owing allegiance to anybody else.
That is what it means.”

Keep in mind that Schumacher-Matos
argues in the same column that it is perfectly
unobjectionable for Mexicans who plan on staying in
Mexico themselves to go across the border so that their
children can have US Citizenship.

Senator Jacob
Howard of Michigan who wrote the Citizenship Clause was
even clearer stating the Amendment

“will not, of
course, include persons born in the United States who
are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of
ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the
Government of the United States, but will include every
other class of persons.” [Amicus
Brief No. 03-6696,
Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, Center for American Unity]

Myth
4: Anchor Babies do not receive any additional welfare

Chapman writes:“Some of the main
benefits available to undocumented foreigners, such as
emergency room care and public education for children,
don`t require them to have a U.S. citizen child. Illegal
immigrant parents are ineligible for welfare, Medicaid,
food stamps and the like. They can be deported.”

WW refutation:
Chapman here debunks his own argument (as well as the
libertarian cliché“Don`t end
immigration, end the welfare state!”).

Of course, he is correct that the
biggest fiscal drain caused by illegal aliens is
education and hospital
Emergency Rooms, which the courts have unfortunately
made off limits. But this is an argument against
further illegal immigration—because it overcrowds our
schools and shuts down our hospitals—not an argument
against birthright citizenship.

Nevertheless, although illegal
aliens drain our economy through jails, hospitals and
education, anchor babies can still further break our
budgets in ways that illegal aliens cannot.

As Chapman notes, illegal aliens
are barred from most federal means tested benefits under
the 1996 Welfare Reforms.

However, their US citizen children
are still eligible for these programs. And our welfare
system is especially tilted to benefit those who are
young and poor. Anchor babiesipso facto fit
the former. According to the Pew Hispanic Center over
1/3 are living
at or below the poverty level.

Additionally, the massive Obamacare
overhaul specifically benefits anchor babies and their
families. While illegal aliens are
ostensibly ineligible for the
“Affordability Credits”,
insurance is based on families. According to Pew
Hispanic, there are 8.8 million people in“mixed families” with US citizen children and illegal alien parents.
According to the Congressional Research Service,

Myth 5: Ending birthright citizenship would
be difficult to implement.

According to Schumacher-Matos,“Abrogating
birthright citizenship additionally would create
practical chaos. All Americans would have to prove their
citizenship. Birth certificates would no longer do. Yet
we lack a national registry of who is a citizen.”

WW refutation:
This is perhaps the silliest objection of all. No one is
calling for retroactively stripping anyone`s
citizenship, so birth certificates issued prior to the
law would suffice as proof of citizenship. And it does
not take much of an imagination to come up with a simple
non-chaotic way for birth certificates to be issued
after birthright citizenship is abolished. There could
be a separate birth certificate issued to children of US
citizens and Legal Permanent Residents; or there could
just be a box that says“US Citizen” that could be checked on the Birth Certificate.

There is a
danger that, if Obama is serious about pursuing“comprehensive
immigration reform” asPeter
Brimelow has
suggested, the birthright citizenship debate might
end up getting put on the backburner by the Patriotic
Immigration Reform movement. It has succeeded in
defeating two amnesties and it will want to defeat this
one.

But the
hard truth is that the Patriotic Immigration Reform
movement has made little progress getting any proactive
changes in policy.

Arizona`s
SB 1070 put the Treason Lobby in the corner. They are
trying to fight back by throwing an amnesty back at us.

Instead of
being content with stopping the amnesty again, we need
to keep pushing forward with

more state laws;

a moratorium on
immigration, and

abolition of birthright
citizenship.

If we want
to stop amnesty, and the destruction of the historic
American nation, the best defense is a strong offense.